Chris,
You're saying something more radical than I meant...
If everything is a metaphor, I guess that obviously means anything is a metaphor
for nothing.
As I mentioned in previous postings, I think your views are perfectly good to
discuss brain workings, and as everything is possibly ultimately rooted in the
brain, you will have no trouble to address whatever issue comes at hand. Still,
if we have to talk about semantics, meanings, concepts - you just remap them on
lower level feelings or whatever - and that will work, except those lower level
feelings or whatever aren't really interesting if one cares for meanings and
concepts, and they are not answers to any question. Like you reply to question A
telling us what in our neurobiology makes us want to put the question at all.
Interesting and probably correct - but this is no reply to the question itself.
At least that's the feeling I get from your postings. Tho, I often like them too
:)
Andrea
Chris Lofting ha scritto:
> elephant wrote:
>
> > ROGER:
> > > perhaps all we ever do is think and speak in metaphors.
> >
> > ELEPHANT:
> > This is something I seem to change my ideas about from time to time,
> largely
> > because no-one can tell me definitively just exactly what metaphor *is*.
> >
> > Ideas?
> >
>
> Analogy is 'X is LIKE Y' and there is an implication there is more to it,
> unlike simile. Metaphor is X described in terms of Y to a degree where X
> 'is' Y.
>
> Metaphor is always approximation, even if down to the 17th decimal point!
> When we use mathematics to describe things then we are using metaphor. All
> maps are metaphors in that once we create the map so we use it to interprete
> and predict but that act forces us to see 'out there' through the map --
> metaphor, reality is described in the terms of the map.
>
> MOQ is metaphor, mathematics is metaphor, the I Ching is metaphor... and
> they all have something in common, they all have the same underlying
> structures and relationships that reflect our neruological/cognitive
> processes at work. That 'fact' allows us to make analogies across
> disciplines very easily.
>
> Metaphor shares the same space with metonymy where metonymy is to the
> particular what metaphor is to the general.
>
> The process of induction, where we move from particular to general causes us
> to make maps -- aka hypotheses, theories, models etc etc These are based on
> our experiences where we particularise from general sensory processes.
>
> As we build the map so we switch from local, reactive behaviours to
> proactive behaviours. The proactivity comes when we start to use the map to
> predict and this in turn speeds-up development BUT it also forces us to live
> through metaphors -- the maps. ... and yes, language too is a map.
>
> BTW Karl Popper did not like induction, for him it required too much of a
> leap in faith but modern science has gone to reduce that leap, although it
> is still there but maybe just at the Planck distance, 10^-40 metres...
>
> >From neurology/cognitive science research, metaphor processing shares the
> same space in the brain as processes dealing with cardinality, topological
> processes including object-to-context relationships.
>
> Chris.
> ------------------
> Chris Lofting
> websites:
> http://www.eisa.net.au/~lofting
> http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond
> List Owner: http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/semiosis
>
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